bit,” Emma said. “On account of going to different colleges. But we’ll always be best friends.”
Riley, who used to talk to her best friend every day, several times a day, was lost. Jock, not one to go long without a girl, was calling and hanging around Riley a lot. He said it made perfect sense for them to be going out. “You can’t tell me she’s not,” he said to Riley. “I’m not sitting home until Emma decides she has time for me.”
Looking back, Riley remembered she’d felt deserted. Abandoned. Was it too much to expect her best friend to talk to her every couple of days? Twice a week? For more than three minutes? And maybe ask her about herself once in a while?
She and Jock were commiserating a lot. Jock was always around, calling her, taking her out for pizza, inviting her to join him for their high school’s homecoming game and subsequent parties with old classmates. They were pals in their shared loneliness.
“Be careful of him,” Adam had said to Riley. “He’s been known to take advantage of girls.”
“We’re just friends,” she said.
But Riley was growing very fond of Jock. She looked forward to every call, every casual date. They stopped commiserating so much and started laughing and having fun. They met friends at pizza parlors and on the beach. One crisp fall night they drove over to the coast and had a few beers by a beach fire, just the two of them. It was amazing how much they had to talk about—Emma’s name never came up. Riley was astonished to find she was feeling far less abandoned.
She was falling for him.
“I think I might be way into you, too,” he said. “Damn, I never saw this coming! I’m starting to think it probably should’ve been me and you from the start.”
“We have to tell her, Jock. We have to tell Emma exactly how this happened. We couldn’t get her on the phone for five minutes, we started hanging out, we got closer—at first because we were both missing her. But then because we have something. I don’t know...chemistry?”
He laughed. “You think Emma cares? Go ahead—leave her a message. She’ll get back to you in a week or two.”
Then it went too far. Riley never meant for it to happen. At least not until she had thought it through much more carefully. Not until they came clean with Emma. She was telling herself it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to spend so much time with Jock, to kiss and fondle and whisper in the dark of night, but then things got out of control and before she knew it, her shirt was pushed up, her jeans were around her knees and they’d gone all the way. Before they’d been honest with Emma.
“Oh, God, I wanted us to tell Emma before something like that happened.”
“Baby, Emma could care less.”
“But I think I’m falling in love with my best friend’s boyfriend!”
“Whoa, whoa,” he said. “Riley, let’s just slow down here...”
“Aren’t we in love?” she asked. “All those things you were saying, that you couldn’t get through this without me and I’m the best thing that’s happened to you and you probably should’ve hit on me first...”
“Hey, shoot me for being nice, huh? Of course I care about you—who said I didn’t? That was totally up to you. You were totally into it. Just don’t say anything, all right? You don’t have to make an announcement, for God’s sake. I won’t tell her. I just don’t know if I’d call it love. Yet.”
“You have to break up with her. Tell her about us. You’re the one who started things with me, not the other way around. Aren’t you breaking up with her?” Riley asked.
“I don’t think I’m going to have to,” he said. “I think she broke up with me about three months ago. She’s partying her ass off in Seattle.”
“And there’s no grass growing under your ass, now, is there?” she threw back at him.
Four weeks later, right before Emma came home for Christmas break, she told Jock she was pregnant. She’d taken the home test and it was positive.
“You sure it’s mine?” he said. “I used a condom.”
“I haven’t been with anyone else,” she informed him hotly.
“But I don’t know that for sure, do I? Since I wasn’t with you every minute. And like I said, I had protection.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. I guess what anyone would do. You need a little money?”
She was so filled with shame, disappointment and rage she wanted to die, but she lifted her chin and said, “Go to hell, Jock.”
But really, when it happened, she had thought she loved him. And she struggled with that feeling, on and off, for a few years after that.
* * *
Adam left Riley in her office and got in his car. He thought he’d drive by his mother’s house and ask if there was anything she needed him to do, see what her plans were for the evening. He might tell her about Emma, but he hadn’t decided yet. Those dozen or so times he had gotten in touch with Emma before she got married, when she was in college and then living in New York in the city, well, he never mentioned that to his family. Or to Lyle. And it seemed as though Emma hadn’t talked about it, either. But maybe it hadn’t left that much of an impression on her.
What’s that about? Do you have a thing for her?
Oh, yeah. He had since she was about fifteen. That summer she’d gone from fourteen to fifteen—man, that was the pivotal summer in a young woman’s life—and Emma had gone from the little sister to a woman of interest.
I see the way you’re looking at Emma, his mother had said. Do not touch that girl, do you hear me? She’s like a daughter to me, like a sister to you and Riley and you’re eighteen. She is off-limits. At least until you’re both adults. This is non-negotiable. Her evil stepmother would love to throw you in jail!
But not long after she passed her eighteenth birthday, she was gone to Seattle. Soon after that Riley was expecting Jock’s baby. There was a significant part of Adam’s heart that was very happy Jock was no longer Emma’s guy, but he was smart enough to know that until Emma recovered from her broken heart, he’d better not step forward.
The next six years were a blur. Emma didn’t return to Santa Rosa except for very brief visits and he didn’t see her. He worked two jobs and went to school, his grandparents both died, he was helping his mother and Riley as much as he could. He grew very attached to Maddie, and Emma moved to New York. He always thought, one of these days...
While he was thinking that, she got married. And not to just anybody, but some internationally known millionaire.
All that had changed. And she was back.
Emma didn’t qualify for unemployment, as hers had been a part-time job. She did qualify for food stamps, which weren’t called food
